Facebook buys fitness app Moves

Facebook on Thursday bought Finnish fitness app maker ProtoGeo Oy, further illustrating the Menlo Park company’s rush to remake itself as more than just a social network.

The latest move gives Facebook a smart phone app called Moves, which automatically tracks 60 type of activities, including walking, cycling and running. The app has been downloaded about four million times.

Facebook did not immediately announce terms of the deal, but a spokesman said three members of the Moves team will work in either Menlo Park or Facebook’s London office.

The app’s description in the Apple iTunes store says it also recognizes “the places in your daily life, shows your day as a simple storyline, plots your routes on a map” and counts your steps and calories burned.

That’s a lot of data on a person’s daily habits, which would add to the information Facebook already gathers from its 1.28 billion monthly active members’ posts on the social network. That data helps Facebook better understand its user, which marketers like because they can buy more targeted advertising.

Photo by ProtoGeo Oy

But in announcing the deal on the Move website, ProtoGeo Oy employees said the data generated by the Moves app would remain separate.

Here’s ProtoGeo’s statement:

“Today, we’re delighted to announce that Facebook has acquired our company and the Moves app. Since we launched Moves, we’ve been focused on running a simple and clean activity diary that millions of people have enjoyed using.

Now, we’re joining Facebook’s talented team to work on building and improving their products and services with a shared mission of supporting simple, efficient tools for more than a billion people.

For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or co-mingle data with Facebook.”

ProtoGeo was founded in 2012 in Helsinki and launched the app in January 2013.

In a statement, Facebook also said Moves would continue as a standalone app, a strategy the company successfully used when it acquired photo sharing app Instagram. Facebook is in the process of completing its $19 billion acquisition of mobile messaging app WhatsApp and $2 billion purchase of virtual reality goggles maker Oculus VR.

“The Moves team has built an incredible tool for the millions of people who want to better understand their daily fitness activity, and we’re looking forward to the app continuing to gain momentum,” the statement said.